A Cottage by the Sea - On My Mind

Helping someone, an antidote to guilt!

9/23/2024

The other day a friend sent me a text lamenting that she just doesn't feel that she is doing enough, the implication being that she doesn't help people as much as she "should". Safe to say this isn't an unknown feeling to any of us. It's part of the human guilt condition that most of us feel! And, if we aren't concerned about helping others, then maybe we should feel a little guilty about that.
But this doing for others isn't just something we "should" do. It is also something we "want" to do, something we "need" to do to help us feel whole and human. It a soul call, a call to be our best human self. When we feel guilty maybe we "should" pay attention to the guilt for a short time, and do what we know we need to do so that it doesn't linger. Helping someone is a great antidote to guilt.

A cottage by the sea that works for you

9/9/2024

The other day at a neighborhood party an acquaintance surprised me by saying, "I read your book."
      I responded with "Which one?" thinking that she was probably a teacher and was acquainted with one of the books I wrote years ago for teachers.
      "No, the one about your mother, the one about the time you spent alone at the cottage by the sea." She went on to tell me about the weeks vacation she, her husband and college age daughter had just spent in Maine.
      "It was kind of like your time; we didn't make any plans; we all just did as we wanted; we walked; we read all day. I'd like to do something like that again, something like you did."
       We went on to talk about possibilities, what that might look like for her, how that would fit in to her life now.
      "You'll figure out a way, a cottage by the sea time that will work for you."
     "I know I will. Thank you for writing the book; thank you for sharing
your journal entries, what you were thinking at the time. They resonates with me now."

Silence of wood chopping

9/4/2024

Silence isn't just the absence of noise in my ear. At the moment, as I write, I am sitting in the sunroom feeling the silence of the sound of my son-in-law's ax splitting the wood from a tree we had taken down in our front yard. I look out the window: crack, and then sheer silence, crack and more sheer silence. I love the sound of the crack, and, the sound of the silence in between the crack. And then I love the calm when he comes in to stack the woodbin.
Yes, silence because it is an act of love as we anticipate the coziness of the woodstove in winter.

A silent day

9/2/2024

Early, and I mean early (4:30) I decided that this Labor Day would be a silent day, a day when I would talk less, which implied listening more. The morning, however, became rather busy around here with my daughter and son-in-law deciding whether to buy a house they had just seen. Much conversation was needed, and rightly so.
Nevertheless, I do give myself a pat on the shoulder for listening more than talking. And now I sit in the yard watching my husband garden in silence.

August 28th, 2024

8/28/2024

I'm still feeling joyful, and I'm going to do my best to keep that feeling going. Here are some photos of the little joyful man that I saw all over Edinburgh when I was there in July 2019. The statues were part of a countrywide project, featuring Oor Wullie, a Scottish comic character , to raise money for children's hospital charities.

Joyful, hopeful, and grateful~

8/24/2024

More about Joy. I'm feeling it with the nomination of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
My purpose here is not to talk about politics, but to lift up joy. You see, my disposition is joyful and hopeful, so when there is a lot of negative conversation I don't have a place for it; I don't know what to do with it. What I notice, however, is that the negativity slips into my being and I begin to respond through a veil of gloom. Oh, I know I shouldn't respond in this way; I have a choice, but I'm not powerful that way. My faith helps me but I'm a human being, living in community with others--my personal communities, my country and the world. I need joy in each of them. As my mom would say. "Very Grateful." And I am.

Solitude with four in the house

8/22/2024

Here's an update on the silence, solitude, and simplicity at my house these days. It's going well. My daughter and her husband continue to look for a house, so they are still living with my husband and me. They are both very conscious of our privacy, as we are of theirs. They have their own section of this old house, and we have ours. We share the kitchen, laundry room and sun room, and the back yard and garden. We eat at 5:30, they eat at 6:30 or after my daughter gets home from work. We all share in the cooking and washing of dishes, and in the yard work. I don't mean we share equally in each task, but if we were to spread out all that needs to be done, I'm confident we would each get one quarter.

Joy learning continues

8/12/2024

Joy. I've been thinking about joy lately. This joy that I've been feeling has brought to mind Joyful Learning, the book I wrote for teachers about the joyful ways I did my best to teach kindergarten. The title of my book was given to me by my mentor, Don Holdaway, who never let me forget that joy was the foundation of natural learning. That's remains true for me. Thirty years plus later, I still learn best when I feel joyful because when I am joyful, I am hopeful. Just saying!

The Three Sieves--worth practicing

8/9/2024

Every year one of my daily readings reminds me of the three sieves, a set of questions attributed to Socrates, who reportedly asked an man who was about to tell him a story if he had put it through the test of the three sieves.

Is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it necessary?

I'm wondering what percent of the stories and information passed along among family and friends fit through such a sieve. I'm wondering about my little world, just little me sharing stuff, passing along information, letting folks know what going on. When I consider this, or for a moment actually practice it, I sense that I become rather boring, uninteresting, and passive. I have little to say; I disappear, at least from the social scene.
Hmm, it's rather appealing. It's what monastics do.

Silence in the mind

8/3/2024

When I started this blog back in 2009, I was particularly focused on solitude. I was starting my time alone at the cottage by the sea. The solitude was palpable; silence and simplicity followed naturally. My life right now still gives me solitude. At the moment I am sitting out at a little spot in my yard that I've carved out for myself.
With my daughter and son-in-law living with us, my life isn't as simple as it was when it was just the two of us, mainly because I am planning meals and cooking for four. But it is simple enough.
What about silence? Yes, there is silence. The four of us want silence and are respectful of each others' time and space for that to be honored. There is enough physical silence.. What I am working on, however, is mental silence: silence that I hear when my mind stops chattering and hears peace, or perhaps just the whisper of a still small voice in the breeze.